Enoch was three hundred and sixty-five years old when “God took him.” Abraham, one hundred and seventy-five, and David only threescore years and ten, yet the term “good old age” was applied to both the last named, so it is plain that mere length of years was not all.
To you, to me, to every true servant of God who is spared to reach the season of hoar hairs, a good old age is as possible as it was to those of whom we read in the sacred pages of the Bible.
None of us can tell what was meant by the four words in which the story of Enoch’s earthly pilgrimage is told. God’s life histories are alike, so brief and yet so full. “Enoch walked with God,” says so little, but means so much, that we are lost in wonder at the vast possibilities suggested to our minds. Is not the first effect of the words good to ourselves? Do they not fill us with new yearnings and longings for closer communion with God than we have hitherto known?
It is sweet to think that each of you to whom I speak may also walk with God, may live in constant touch with Him, and have a delightful sense of His nearness to you and love for you. If you walk with God, your feet must be on the “narrow way” which leads to everlasting life. It will not be free from trouble, sorrow, temptation, or difficulty, but it will be a path of holiness, righteousness, peace and joy. If you thus “walk with God,” His presence insures fulness of joy whatever trials you may meet with on your way. Ever pressing onward, your latter days will be better than those of your youth, for “the path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
Yours may sometimes be but trembling footsteps that you plant on that “narrow way,” and many a time and oft you will need to cry, “Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps slip not.” But thoughts of joy and cheer will help you onward, for you will remember how near He is with Whom you are striving to walk, as well as all-powerful to keep you from falling. I say “you” instead of “we” and “us,” as I usually do. You will understand why. I am such a long way in advance of you in the journey of life, my dear girl friends, that in fancy I look back and see you comparatively near the beginning of it.
The first Bible character of whom it is said, he died “in a good old age,” is Abraham, who is called “the friend of God” by chronicler, prophet and apostle.
Surely this is the most glorious title ever given to a human being; yet if you and I walk in “the way of the righteous” we may joyfully claim to share it through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Did not He say to the little band of disciples who had journeyed with Him, seen His miracles, and sat as learners at His feet, “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you”?
To be called the servant of Christ is an honour unspeakable. But Christ’s words, which may be joyfully appropriated by every true disciple of His, are these. “Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”
You see then, dear ones, that if we know the will of God as Christ has revealed it, and knowing render hearty willing obedience, we, too, may claim the proud title of friends of God.